Not every one has gone over to the Nvidia side, young jedi. You have much to learn....

Not every one has gone over to the Nvidia side, young jedi. You have much to learn....

Alot of people have built there systems say n the last two year, lasts years buyers would not have SLI, but there systems are still fast and they dont see the need to build a new system, By the time they do, they will have the chance to buy ATi Xfire

People also will consider the cost that they had when they updated there system last. say 3 time there monthly salery. Id say they would hang on in there till the end..

People who havent updated in say two to 4 years, well, there not going to, perhaps 20% will, as there getting old.. and dont see the need to.

Younger people, those you are growing up in a digital age, will use a computer, they may or may not play games, ( I know in my time most people had consoles and very few people had commodores and amiga's) They may move over, but consider this....
If you have used the consoles, been dupped into the media hype that there he best things, then your not going to look at a computer in a gaming perspective. consol games at most have 16 buttons, computers 101 or 303 combination plus the mouse.. so are computer games harder? to noobs yes.

Most of the systems that I sell are costly gaming systems or they are specialist systems for video and audio work. I dont sell cheapo will do for basic gaming, No one has asked. they either want the best they can afford or get.
Most people will spend around £3K on a full system so they are not going to change because ATi's new graphics.

People are likely to upgrade just for gaming, a P2 500Mhz 128Mb Windows 98 system will run word and even surf the internet, send emails, its only people who game, video edit, or do design work on computer that consider upgrading.

On the other hand, Dell HP and the clone system builders have built there systems to last about a year so that people have to buy a new one. which makes market scene. IN 2002 One million computers were sold in the UK and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas sold One million copies were sold in the first 9 days! so it should give you some Idea, What did the people do, upgrade there memory. NOT there graphics, nor CPU NOR motherboard.

When people get the gaming bug, they then buy newer games that require faster processors and faster graphics. that is what sells computers.

of course
I would buy SLI before crossfire, but even if I don't like the other canidate I feel they deserve accurate representation.

Sander you do come off a bit strong to the point of it looking like you are just spreading FUD though. (I don't mean to question your objectivity but I know I have trouble writing too aggressively sometimes, especially when i've previously been wrongly attacked as you have.)

However I will add that tom's missed how certain render modes won't be supported in certain circumstances.

Late? Yes. Filling wild boasts? No.

On the 2 cards:
Most people who would get this would be informed though, its costly, as by the time its an upgrade option to keep that video system current, the sales people will have it all figured out (with regards to explaining it and figuring out which one the buyer needs) But as I said before, the assertion that identical cards are needed is simply not true. Matching cards are however.

I read a couple of weeks back on either anandtech.com or pcstats.com that the 80 series of forceware drivers will get rid of the sli card combination limitation. This would be very exciting news as I currently own a SLI board with only one 7800 gtx and will look to upgrade when the price lowers on the gtx.

Well thats all good and well, taking a look at what people will take as the NEW dual graphics solutions some avid fan boys of ATi will wait till the ATI systems come out,

I whouldnt hold my breath waiting for anything from Nvidia, Im still waiting for fixes that were due out 6 months ago..

You have to think that nvidias sli may accept differnt BIOS's but not cards and then run at a slower speed setting when the graphics card are missmatched as there is hell of a lot of diffence in the video ram on cards and voltages.. so you cant really mix match

This driver fixes some issues found on Release 75 drivers on Black and White including:
- Performance slowdown on GeForce 6 and 7 series GPUs
- Texture corruption on GeForce 6 series GPUs
- Adds SLI profile for the best out of box experience

In addition this new driver also adds many new features for our GPUs that function properly and reviewers can immediately test including:
- Increased performance for GeForce GPUs
- SLI Mixed vendor support <------------- Bite me. ;D
- Dynamic SLI with no reboot when using a single monitor
- PureVideo and HDTV enhancements

I am personally an ATI fan but Nvidia most defiantly pwns with prices.
Nvidia's SLI capable cards are bang for your buck in a major way.
I would rather Nvidia SLI than Crossfire any day for prices.
And no I am no stupid fan boy trolling this site I currently own an ATI Radeon X850XT PE.